


Sun and Moon

by countingcyr



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: M/M, POV Ryan Ross, Panic At The Disco (Band)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-28
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-09-20 09:50:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9485816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/countingcyr/pseuds/countingcyr





	1. CHASER OF FATE

The sun is beautiful. It’s bright as all hell, and can heat up a town in an instant, but it’s still amazing. Its midday rays pass through my blue curtains, throwing the whole room into a beautiful shade of blue, just a bit darker than the shade of the outside sky. It was a lot nicer than my usually plain white walls; now I got to stare at a marvellous blue. And boy, did I stare. I stared for ages, thinking everything about this blue, the sky, and the sun as I could, smiling at every inch of containment around me… The floor, the roof, the walls, my door-

That door flew open, my mouth doing the same action. I felt a sound tear its way out of my throat, but that was just for the man, my father, to hear. I could not hear a thing, you see. I was deaf, and I have been since I was born.

My father was a bad man. A very bad man. Ever since my mum took her own life, he’s succumbed to alcohol to make himself feel better. I actually feel pity for him, sometimes. I’m quite sure that he blames himself for what she did, and if she did it now, then he would be right. He was a great man, though, before the incident. He’d help around the house, cook dinners, do my mother’s hair up nice, and he even forgave her for that one time that she went out to a party and hooked up with some random guy while she was drunk. He seemed a little deflated, but he had never been mean to her. Seeing her state, my father would cook up the most amazing meals until my mum finally realised that he had truly forgiven her, and she had been happy for about a month, until the downward spiral started. She lost her job, she stopped bringing in money, her sister died. Then she took every pill we had in our cupboard, and she was gone.

Now my father drank six-packs of beers daily, at a minimum. Then he’d throw the glass around the room, smashing as much of the house as he could. He’d always save one bottle though, great for hitting me with. The pain of an overly sturdy glass bottle was immense, and even after months of dealing with being hit on the head by them, I still would wake up bleeding from the sides of my face. It was complete horror, what he did to me, but it would do me no good if I just sent him off to some mental health place. I had to fix him. No pills could save him if he’d gotten this far. It was now my job to make sure he got better, and to make sure that he didn’t end up the same way mum did, because then what would I do? I had no friends. Where would I go?

I pushed myself into the wall, backing away from my towering father. He was the tallest man I had ever seen in my life, probably over six feet tall, and his height was part of what scared him about me. Also, the empty vodka bottle that he held in his hand. I was prepared for every hit he’d bring me. At least, I thought I was. With the velocity that he brought down the pain from the glass bottle fractured through me right away, and I could feel my lips part, my vocal chords doing extreme aerobics in attempt to give out a scream. I could immediately feel the tears welling up behind my eyes, but I did all my attempt to push them back. I stared up at my dad, watching his lips move. I can’t read lips, so I just stood there until he was done screaming at my deaf ears, then he struck me with the back of his hand and walked out.

I can’t begin to explain how I feel about him. I should hate him, but he’s my father, and I must fix him, but something inside of me doesn’t want to go anywhere near him, and I’m quite sure that it’s the rational side. I let myself sink down to the floor, looking at the reflecting colour on the blue door. I want to stare at it, but I need to breathe; it’s too stuffy in this room. So I stand up and walk to my window, sliding open the glass interior, then pulling out the flyscreen like I had done so many times. I stuck my head out, finding the ladder that I had placed there oh-so-many months ago, and began to climb down it. It wasn’t that much of a jump, but I was pretty sure that my lanky legs would break if I hit the concrete coming from the second floor. I remember when my only friend died, two years ago, and I jumped from the roof. I broke up one entire leg, the other foot, fractured that ankle, and fractured my hip. I also got a minor head trauma, though it seemed not to lead to any problems at this point in life. I feel like that’s not so much of a bad thing.

As soon as I touched the concrete path of our back garden, I started running towards the town park. I could probably close my eyes and not make a wrong turn to the park, I’d been there so many times. I used to get up early in the mornings and run there, just so I could watch the sun rise in the morning. The forest that the park broke out into made the sunrises so beautiful here, especially in the summer. The sun rises earlier in the summer, so less people are awake, and fewer people get to be there to watch the sun rise from their rooftops. It’s just walking into winter now, so the sun rises at around the 6:45 time, and much of the world is awake and taking photos of the sun as it rises over the city. Lucky for me I don’t have to hear the cars driving by behind me, I can focus on the sun as it appears to watch us over for yet another day, every day.

The sun is like a promise. It promises to give us light every day, to feed our plants and dry our clothes and warm us up. The problem is, if you take too much advantage of it, it will make you really sick, and then it will kill you. It’s the kind of promise that walking right into it without any kind of protection is a bad idea, and it’s a lot safer to watch it from afar. And the more fair (for the metaphor fair as in fair play) you are, the harder it can hurt you. It’s better to watch it from afar; to admire it like poison that if you let it touch you, it eats you away. It’s a two sided promise; ‘if you protect yourself I’ll help you, but if you don’t I won’t let you stick around to see the help I’ve done’.

I finally reached the park. It’s only about a ten minute trip, but it feels like forever while I’m walking there, waiting to be able to sit under the shade on a pincic table and watch the rest of the world roll around me. I sat on my picnic table, staring at the trees and the sky until my eyes drifted down to a boy sitting on one of the two swings, letting it gently rock him back and forward. I could tell that his head was hung, and from the rest of the body language, including holding his legs limp to scrape the ground, I could tell he was sad about something. I didn’t have much time to analyse him, or to decide whether or not to confront him, and his head shot up and I realised that there was another kid across near the forest using his hands as a megaphone, probably calling for this boy, and I watched him get up off the swing, gaining sass in his walk as he went over to his friend, and they ran into the forest. I waited a little bit before going and taking the boy’s place on the swing, kicking the sand around. I saw a glint as I shuffled around the sand, my guess was the sun reflecting off something metal, so I immediately looked down to investigate. After a little while I managed to dig up one of those medical bracelets, and I regretted finding it. I now had to decide what to do, and I had no idea what that might be. Not until I felt a shadow move over me, and someone started rattling away. I looked down and he tapped my shoulder, holding his hand out. It took me a moment to realise he wanted the bracelet, and I was quite relieved that I didn’t have to make my own action plan. I probably would have left it there. He passed it to his friend, who I knew immediately was the boy that had been sitting on the swing. They walked away quickly, so the only thing I remembered was his dark brown eyes in the contact we had made for just a second before his friend had dragged me off. His eyes were beautiful.

I waited on the swing set until the sun fell down into sleep and the moon took over its place. I hate the sunset. I don’t want to see the moon take over the sun’s place. I walked home in the cold, having forgot a jacket. I climbed up the ladder into my bedroom, quickly fixing the flyscreen and sliding the glass back over it before deciding I’d skip dinner today. I didn’t feel like going downstairs and microwaving something my dad had bought a week ago. So I just scrolled through my instagram feed until a letter was shoved under my door. I dropped my phone and opened the letter, breifly scanning the words. It was some kind of acceptance letter into a school, which I honestly had no care about. I was honestly too tired to care, so I put my phone on charge and jumped into bed, staring at my ceiling for a little while.

It was Saturday, that meant that my dad was working tomorrow. Good. I don’t have to be looking over my shoulder all day. I’d imagine that my dad wanted me to enrol in this school that had sent us a letter, which was now on my floor, so I’d probably have to do that, too, and unenrol from my currently horrible school.

At the school I went to, everyone was a jerk. Everyone pointed and teased at me because I couldn’t hear what they were saying, and the teachers were honestly hopeless because I needed an aid next to me every second, who was also hopeless, mind you, and they just gave her sheets of paper to explain to me. I was behind in almost everything, except mathematics. Since we had to just get it from a textbook, I was pretty okay, but when I didn’t understand that meant that I had to wait until I got home so that I could look it up on the internet. I was also alright in music, I enjoyed playing the guitar, even though I had no idea what it sounded like, I somehow managed to do it. At least, I thought I did. My friend that I used to have used to sign to me that he loved my playing and asked me to play for him a lot, so I guess I just went off that. I haven’t really played in two years, since he left me. The guitar is a shaky thing for me to hold now.

He was the only thing that kept me going to school, that friend. His name was Jeremy Hargeeve, and he would sign to me across the class just to tell me that Fred had told the teacher that her dress was coming up when it really wasn’t. He was that kid that everyone sort of rejected and apparently there was a reason but he didn’t want to talk about it. I thought he was just like any other kid, but he obviously didn’t think so. I remember when I learned that he had autism and I asked him why he was ashamed of it and he said he really wasn’t, but ‘normal’ people didn’t like people with autism for some reason, and that was the end of that conversation. Again, I thought he was a ‘normal’ child, but society had labelled him for no reason. The only thing I saw him do that not all of the other kids at school did was bite his knuckles, but then again I bit my fingernails, how different was that? Jeremy was a huge tear in my heart, but a tear in my heart that left a good scar. He taught me that not even I was that different, even though I couldn’t hear.

By this point, I could tell sleep wasn’t going to come easy, so I used a technique that my mum had taught me many years ago, identifying what my hands were touching, whether it was warm or cold, how it felt, everything, moving across my entire body until all my focus was at my head and my inner arms could grab sleep by the arms and envelop myself in it, closing my eyes and letting it take me away.

***************************************************************** 

Lucid dreaming. I could do that. I could watch my figure in my dreams, sometimes I could even control it, and that’s how I know so much about the world around me. Today the only thing I was learning was fear, specifically new situations. 

I was walking through a pair of moderately tall iron gates, giving way into a small school. The moment I set my second foot through there were kids, demons, monsters, all screaming at me words I couldn’t hear, shaking me and throwing me against walls, shoving their hands down my throat and pulling out the sounds from my voice box. The demons would melt and go through my ears into my brain, tearing it apart but slightly unsure of how it worked, and the more they were unsure, the more they went on to destroy it. They kept going until the monsters were bleeding out my eyes, all the kids had their hands tearing things from my throat and the demons were crawling back out of my ears and I was dead, an empty body. An empty shell.

***************************************************************** 

I jerked awake the moment I could see my lifeless eyes. Where had that come from? What had my brain registered that triggered that ‘new situtations, new people’ fear? After pulling small bits together it hit me. I rolled right out of bed and clawed open the letter I had found yesterday again, remembering skimming over it, not really thinking much of anything I saw except that my father wanted me to go to a new school and that I should enrol into it.

But that wasn’t right. I thought it was a ‘you have been accepted and my now enrol’ letter, when it was actually a ‘your enrolment was successful’ letter.

I shook my head, reading it over and over until every word was imprinted on my brain, and I felt the tears leaking out of my eyes, slowly. I couldn’t do this, how could my father ever think I could? Then I remembered that he didn’t care, and I let myself melt into the floor for probably hours before I decided to get up and research this school, because tomorrow is Monday, and when the sun rises, I’ve got to go to this school, and I don’t even know where it is. After forcing google maps into not showing me a street on the other side of America, I finally found out that it is literally on the other side of the forest near the park. That makes up for it, I guess, I can go straight to the park after school. Though it’ll probably get a little bit full. That’s okay, the people will probably ignore me, like they usually do.

I slept the rest of the day. The dreams calmed down, instead of me being literally torn apart from the inside I was sat at the park, watching the sun rise, and this time, it took the entire world down with it. It wasn’t like a painful, tough fire though, it was just a slow rise, a flash of light, as the entire world folded in on itself, and it was blissful. I feel like I wouldn’t mind going down that way. To be sat on my picnic bench is one thing, it always feels nice to be sat in the same spot, just staring at the world as it moves around and I can’t hear a thing that’s going on. The sun is another thing. I can’t explain what the sun is to me in better words than I did before. I think it is the most beautiful thing in this entire universe, including space itself. It’s definitely more beautiful than humanity. The last thing is an ending. Oh, how I ache for an ending. I hate knowing that in a few years I’ll die and I will not know how the world will destroy itself. Will we go down by war? What about the sun exploding? Global warming? A plague? Who knows how we will end up rotting on the earth’s surface? All I want is an ending to please all of my questions, to cease every doubt that I’ve had. Putting all those three things together made that dream probably the best I had ever had, in preparation for what I had no doubt would be the worst day of my entire life.

I don’t really know what about social situations it was that I hated. I mean, it meant that I had to explain to another bunch of people that I’m deaf, and that varied in difficulty, usually quite hard as no one seemed to know sign language anymore. It usually ended in my writing on my arm in marker “I’m deaf” and them giving me some kind of disgusted look and walking away. I then proceeded, once I was home, to scrub furiously at my arm in attempt to get rid of it. At this point I’m probably headed to it having a permanent tatoo in my own handwriting, which I’m sure didn’t look nice in the least. I was not a particularly neat person.

Part of me was waiting for my father to get home before I remembered that he spent Sunday nights working all out. He was an architect, known for going completely insane on hotels, caravan parks, and holiday houses. That was probably because he drank so much that it reflected on how busy the tourist attractions looked. I guess when people are drunk they basically go crazy, and I feel like there is a lot of my dad’s self in his ruthless designs. I never really got to see him sober anymore, so I guessed that now his ‘self’ was his intoxicated, brain-dead side to me.

I ran downstairs to grab a quick little dinner, because I was really hungry and I hadn’t eaten all day, but ended up just having a sandwich. I wasn’t particularly against that, but I was kind of feeling like pasta or lasagne. Not that I knew how to cook lasagne or my dad ever would, but it was definitely worth the thought. I hoped that someday I’d make a friend and we’d be able to eat lasagne at the park, maybe not on my bench, but who knows, maybe one day I’ll want to share that with someone. To be honest, I’d basically given up hope on friendships at this point. No one wanted to talk to me when they realised I couldn’t actually hear what they were saying. It was just too hard for someone to write on a piece of paper and for me to write back, I guess. Some people had tried using texts but not everyone wanted the little deaf kid’s number on their phones. Unfair, I thought it was, as I would learn to write braille for someone who was blind. I suppose people are different. 

I didn’t enjoy my sandwich. Not at all. The cheese was tasteless and the butter was too salty; the bread also tasted kind of stale. I only ate about half of it before I decided to just throw it away and grab some stuff, shoving it into a bag so that I had something to eat tomorrow. We never had much in the house, just some fruit and and rice crackers. I didn’t really eat that much; I didn’t see the point of it. I ate dinner most nights and some days I had breakfast, but I drank steadily during the day, which was all we really needed. We only need one moderate-sized meal a day and then a couple bottles of water in a day, which I held to. The less I ate, the more other people could, right?

I decided to go watch the sun set, so I threw the bag in the fridge and grabbed a coat from my room, thankful that I could actually walk out the front door this time. I grabbed the keys from the bench where my dad left them and locked the door as I walked out. I put the keys in my pockets with my hands, the coat still draped over my left arm. The streets were busy with people going out for dinner on a lovely Sunday night, and I had a pang of worry as I got closer to the park that lots of couples would be there, making out under the setting sun. Luckily, it was just about deserted when I got there, the only people there were a couple kids and their mum who was trying desperately to round them up. 

I took my seat on my bench and put the coat over my shoulders, not putting my arms through the sleeves. I just sat and stared as the blue exploded into orange, lighting up the enitre park in a lovely warm scale. I felt a sick feeling in my stomach. Why was I here? I hate the sunset. I don’t want to watch the best thing in my life go down! As the pinks started rolling in, something in me cracked and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I didn’t want the sun to go down at all. I don’t want to walk the dark streets. I don’t want to see people locking the doors and flicking out the lights. I thread my arms into the coat, buttoning it up and wishing I had brought a scarf. I only stopped thinking about my bare neck so that I could rush back home with my eyes down so that I don’t meet anyone else’s eyes. The streets were just turning a final purple as I unlocked my door and threw myself in, grateful for the warmth of my house. I locked the front door, made sure the back was locked, then locked myself in my room. I crawled under the sheets and buried my face in my hands.

I hate these days. The days where I feel like if there’s no light I can’t function, and I can’t bear to see the day end. So I kept my light on in hope that it would trick my brain into feeling like it’s still the day, and it seemed to since I managed to fall asleep pretty quickly.

Nightmares again. This time it’s my father, bashing me senseless. I take a moment to stare into his brown eyes, and I’m looking there for ages until all the light around him disappears, and that send a chill, starting behind my eyes, snaking down my throat, dancing down my spine until it freezes my stomach. Then the eyes blink and I melt. When the light left the background, it went into the eyes, making it definitely not my dad’s eyes. The eyes became the lightest brown I had ever seen in my life as I realised whose eyes they were. Jeremy’s. I remember Jeremy’s eyes the most out of any other feature of him. They’re the one thing I can’t erase from my brain. They were so white, some kind of brown-blonde colour, and they would seem to glow like there was a massive LED torch behind them. I was surprised that not every girl in the school had the hots for him, no matter that his brain was slightly different to theirs. It hurt me that his beauty was so short lived. The eyes turned back into my dad’s without another second’s notice and the light was back as I hit the floor, but it was made of woodchips. I opened my eyes to see the familiar park grounds, but I was there by the moonlight, and all the slides and swings and tables were knocked down; like a hurricane had come through and ruptured everything in the park. My park.

I stared until I could stare no more. I could see the sky getting lighter as the moon fell. I could feel the heat on my face as I watched the sun rise. I closed my eyes, and let myself wake up.


	2. MY HEAVY HEART

((( asl is the sign language used just so you know and t-a-l-k-i-n-g-i-n-s-i-g-n-l-a-n-g-u-a-g-e-l-o-o-k-s-l-i-k-e-t-h-i-s so yea )))

No, I was not looking forward to today. I could feel my entire body groaning as I dropped out of bed and slumped towards my wardrobe. I found a not-formal-but-not-exactly-casual dress shirt in my mountains of shirts and a pair of nice black skinny jeans and put them on, matching a pair of cheap white vans with them before heavily tracing my eyes with a new eyeliner I had bought last week that seemed to work pretty well. I was in one of those moods where you just want to lay in bed for your entire life. There’s nothing wrong with that, bed is great. Who needs to get up and watch the world ignore you when you can build your own?

Directions written on my hand, I left without having breakfast. I wasn’t hungry. My dad wasn’t home, so I didn’t encounter any problems on my way out of the house. I went from memory to my park, pausing a moment to take in the scene. There were two short boys there, pointing and jabbing at each other. One of them had a fedora and glasses; he looked like your average ‘cute’ boy. The other looked like the average emo boy. I wouldn’t be surprised if when he looked at me then pointed to me and said something to his friend that he said ‘woah, he’s emo too!’, even though I wasn’t that emo. Actually, that is probably not that true. I low-key look the part.

They beckoned for me to come over, and at first I thought about pretending that I didn’t even see them, but they obviously realised I had. Another option was to be rude and flip them off or just walk right past them. The other option was the one I chose; to just go to them. I managed to force my feet towards them, and then force them to stop when I got there. I kind of just smiled awkwardly and waved. One of them started talking, but I couldn’t read lips so I just did an action with my head that I was pretty sure would mean maybe. This made him confused and he looked at his slightly smaller friend. Now thinking of height, I realised that I was a good ten centimetres taller than them. I smiled a little and even the fedora one made a face. I breathed out heavily and made the action you usually do to your throat when you’re like ‘nooo’ but on my ear, and they seemed to get it. The smaller one (the one in the fedora, that is) managed to write ‘s-o-u-u-y’, but I managed to get the hint he was saying sorry. I smiled, and slowly signed ‘t-h-a-t-s-o-k-a-y’. Unfortunately, I didn’t think he got it. I shook my head, gave them a smile, and pointed towards the forest behind them. The emo kid said something to the fedora one and he signed ‘d-s-y-o-u-e-s-c-o-o-l’ and pointed there. I guessed that he asked is my school was that way, so I nodded and he nodded too, so I guessed he meant we went to the same school? I smiled and they started talking to each other so I kind of stood there awkwardly until the emo one grabbed my arm and dragged me behind him.

I had to continuously tug before he let go of my arm and just let me follow him to the school. The forest was thick, there was a point where I thought we were never coming out, but I was surprisingly happy to see the light of the sun when we emerged on the other side. It was busier on this end, though that might have been from the amount of people that were scurring off to the little school that was just around the corner. The two little men led me all the way to the school, all the way to the office and talked to the receptionist who made me write my name on a piece of paper and she gave me a timetable. I was then tugged out of the classroom to a H block where one of them had found a piece of paper and a pen and told me to wait here until kids started showing up. I nodded and asked them for their names. The emo one wrote ‘Peter Lewis Kingston Wentz III’ and I smiled as he wrote ‘but Pete will do’. The one in the glasses wrote underneath his ‘just Patrick thanks :)’ and I wrote ‘call me Ryan’ under that and they both nodded. Patrick wrote ‘okay bye Ryan’ and took off. 

I sat there, waiting and waiting and waiting until finally a couple of people came to the stairs and I got up, standing in a line which was separated into boys and girls. I seemed to be the start of the boys’ line, so I made sure to keep my head down and pretend that I wasn’t that new kid that everyone was going to realise existed. As soon as the teacher opened the door I raced in and tried to get a seat in the furthest corner. After I was satisfied with my seat position I sat down and looked away from all eyes in the room. It was probably five minutes before the teacher actually started teaching, talking and signing something (to me) about finding a group to do our music project on. I just sat there as the rest of the class got up into groups that I imagined were already formed and moved over to the pianos in the room, some getting guitars that I only just realised were hanging all around the walls.

The three people left sitting were me, and two other boys that seemed to be in conversation with each other. The teacher started talking to them and then pointing to me, much to my disappointment. I’m not going to lie, I kind of wanted to not do this. I wasn’t really in the mood for it. Both the boys walked over to me and the teacher followed, slightly nudging them to the side so that he could be my main vision.

‘t-h-e-s-e-b-o-y-s-d-o-n-o-t-h-a-v-e-a-g-r-o-u-p-e-i-t-h-e-r-w-o-u-l-d-y-o-u-l-i-k-e-t-o-j-o-i-n-t-h-e-m’

I shrugged and the teacher pushed them towards me and walked back behind his desk. I looked up at the pair of them from my seat, one looked incredibly annoyed and one looked slightly familiar. He had an angular face and deep, dark, brown eyes. One side of his mouth was raised in a quirky grin and he leaned on my table, under his leather jacket I could see a glint of metal reflecting off the artificially lighted room, and that’s when I realised he was the boy that had lost the medical bracelet that I had seen in the park on Saturday. I was pretty sure this person was not that friend though. No; the other friend had longer hair than this one. The boy with the medical bracelet had an obnoxiously large forehead, I should point out, but it looked great on him. It suited his quiff-style hair and his kind of large nose, to be honest. His friend had a somewhat similar hairdo but perhaps it was slightly more grown than forhead’s? 

The friend pointed to a piano and a guitar while forehead yelled across the room to someone. I replied by pointing at the guitar so as we walked out the door he grabbed one and gave it to me when he sat down on the piano in the hallway. Forehead followed a couple seconds later with three sheets of paper; one for the piano, one for the guitar, and one for a singer. I gathered that forehead was going to be the singer. Suddenly he started waving his fingers around and pointing to me and gesturing to his friend. His friend just shrugged so forehead got his phone out and seemed to be writing a text before I realised he had just got it out so that he could say something to me. The page wrote can you even play guitar and I just nodded. He thumbs up-ed me and put his phone away, forcing his friend to learn his part and eventually making me join in. It took a couple times before we were in sync (I think?) but we managed to get it once or twice, apparently, before the lesson ended. Forehead looked so pleased to walk out of the room, but the teacher just rolled his eyes and signed ‘y-o-u-m-a-y-l-e-a-v-e-n-o-w’ so I did. 

Maths. Maths was never fun. I let out a heavy beath of air and walked towards this E block (the classrooms seemed to be in alphebetical order) and I found my classroom shortly after. I did the same; wait for the teacher and as soon as I was inside the room make a dash for the back corner. I stared at my hands for probably fifteen minutes before I was thrown six feet into the air by surprise since a textbook was put on my desk. Slammed, actually. I just kind of frowned as the teacher flipped through the pages, selecting one and brushing his finger over it. I took it as I should complete the page, so I began to work on it straight away. Well, I worked on some of it. I was feeling really distracted. I felt like I was being given too much attention today, and I’m not even aware why. I just watched as the teacher waved a pen around and drew on the board, aware that a couple of people in front of me were texting, not paying any attention, some were actually working, and some were just kind of staring around; doing the same as me.

I was too relieved to walk out of the classroom, annoyed by the extra weight the textbook was serving me, but relieved anyway. We had a break, and I rushed around, looking for somewhere I could be alone, but instead I ran right into forehead and his gang of hooligans or whatever. When I looked at him (we were roughly the same height, I was a little taller) he bit one side of his lip, and I felt all the blood rush up to my cheeks. He was actually a good deal hot, but cute at the same time. The kind of person with a face that you can stare at all day, and get lost in his eyes. After a moment he looked down and I forced myself to turn around and walk away. 

I cannot explain how relieved I was to realise that the last bell of the day had rung and I could go right off to the park. As usual, it was about two minutes after the bell had gone that I was aware it had gone, but in every way I could not wait to run out of this place and sit in the park until it started to get late. I managed to run into Pete and Patrick when I was just walking out of the gates, though, and they walked me all the way to the park, putting my number on their phone, digit by digit, as I held up each one. One of them made a group chat and we chatted away as we walked, them occasionally laughing, me just watching as they threw their heads back. I wished that I knew what laughing sounded like. All the stories say that it’s beautiful when people laugh. I wish I knew.

Pete and Patrick eventually left me to sit alone in the park, so I got off the swings and went off to my bench, staring at the sky. I noticed a figure going onto the swings about half an hour later, I’m guessing, and I realised that it was forehead himself, sitting with his head hung and the same body language as I had seen him on Saturday. I slowly forgot he was there as I stared at the sky.

There hasn’t been much clouds lately. Sometimes some high clouds… Cirrocumulus or cirrostratus. Those types. The sky seemed to want to stay blue at the moment, and I don’t really mind it. You can see the sun better. I am of the pale-type skin, though, so I can get sunburned pretty easily, and I have to wear tonnes of suncream, but I make sure I do so that I can see the sun. I love it, it’s just something that I feel like I was born to love. 

I’m thrown out of my deep thinking by a tap on my leg. I look down to see forehead waggling a piece of paper in front of me, and I slowly take it from his fingers. It has his number written on it. He looks up at me with somewhat sad eyes and gestures to it, so I grab my phone out and enter it, looking up at him and texting a simple ‘yes?’.

He grabs his phone out and replies with ‘is your name ryan or’.

me: yes what is yours

him: brendon

me: ok

me: why did you ask me to do this

him: are you here lots

me: yes

him: how many times have you seen me

I look at him, looking back down at the phone. Is he also here a lot?

me: only twice, Saturday and today

him: ok you don’t tell people when you see me mkay

I nodded, looking him in the eye. He smiles and walks off, heading the opposite way that I would have to walk to get to my house. I watch him the entire way as he goes. Why would he pretend in front of people that he’s happy and edgy and whatnot but the moment he can get out of their sight he just sits on the swingset, his head held low and a sad kind of aura around him. I was definitely very interested to see what this boy was like. I looked down at my phone again, re-reading the short amounts of texts that we just shared, and sigh. I debate texting him again, asking him if he’s alright, but instead I decide to just grab all my stuff and go home. I’ve briefly forgotten about the maths textbook, and I am surprised by the extra weight just for a second as I begin the stumble back to my house, prepared for anything my father might, literally, throw at me.

I know he’s home, so I don’t bother knocking. No way he’s sober enough to lock the door anymore. I always come home to an unlocked door, a mad father pointing or widly moving his jaw at the television or angrily walking around the house while on the phone, and a small meal either in the fridge or on the counter. So I am definitely surprised when I hit the door face first because the handle doesn’t turn. I slowly rap my fingers on the door. Did something happen? Has my father not been home? I start to panic before hitting the door again, and this time it opens. My heart drops when I see the woman standing in front of me. She’s wearing a straight skirt that goes down to her knees, a blazer with a small rose pinned to it and a white shirt underneath. She definitely reminds me of a flight attendant other than the fact that she’s wearing the outfit in black and she doesn’t have the silly hat or a tie around her neck. She has a pair of white stockings on, black stiletto heels meeting them. She wears red lipstick and winged eyeliner plus the red eyeshadow. Her cheekbones are contoured so that they appear higher. Her hair is hanging out plus it is straightened and all I can guess is that she’s from some kind of formal company. 

Her pointy eyebrows raised towards her brown bangs. She moves her lips and I just sit there, biting my lip, and then she turns her head inside and moves her lips to something inside, so I just wait until she opens the door wider to let me in. I give her a little smile and go right to the lounge room, seeing my father sitting on the lounge with his hands in his lap. He nods at me and points upstairs, and I know that if I stay I won’t be able to tell what is happening anyway, so I listen and make my way slowly up the stairs into my room. I am slightly worried as I close the blue door of my bedroom, and drop my bag onto the floor. I slide down the door, leaning my head against it.

My father is sober. He’s got someone there with him. She’s dressed smartly, probably not a colleuge. A therapist is my best guess. He told be to leave the room even though I’m deaf, so it’s something that he doesn’t want me to know about. His hands were knotted in his lap and that’s never a good sign, it usually means that the person is nervous. I can feel my brain starting to overthink before my phone buzzes in my pocket, and I fish it out. It’s a text from my dad. I haven’t received a text from him in so long. The text reads:

Hey George, sorry I made you leave. This lady is leaving at 6:00 and I can make you dinner then. (:

I feel like my eyeballs are busting out of my sockets. My father? Making dinner? I’m honestly too shocked to think of a reply, so I just reason that I’ll go down at six to have the dinner with him. I exit his text and I see Brendon’s number sitting there, so I decide to add it to a contact so that I know when it’s him texting me. Then I plug my phone into a wall and just take a moment to breathe. I am honestly too confused right now and what I need is to just calm down. I want to sleep but the sun is about to set meaning it’s around 5:30 and I honestly would miss the dinner with my dad if I went to sleep now. So I browse through my instagram feed, check up on my account and see the (1) next to the add on in the top left corner. I click it and find an account labelled ‘burndxwnthedisco’, which I click on and find it to be an aesthetics account, with a simple black and white theme seeming to happen the entire time, at the moment there’s hands lining the outside and song lyrics in the middle. I have no idea why this account was attatched to my contacts. Was it Pete or Patrick? Pete’s personality seemed to fit it. Then again, Patrick could also be an option. I screenshot the account and send it to the group chat, typing ‘is this one of your instagram accs or’ then going back to editing through my account. Patrick replies almost instantly with ‘no lol don’t have insta’ and I only have to wait about two minutes for Pete so say ‘no I run a meme account obvs’. I roll my eyes at Pete’s reply. 

I’m still utterly confused whose account it is when I realise it’s just a bit past six, so I run downstairs to find my father at the stove, cooking pasta. I drum my fingers on the bench to get his attention, and he turns around and gives me a simple smile. I return it and sit on one of the white barstools, grabbing the pen and piece of paper my dad has put on the bench that reads ‘is pasta ok or you want something else?’. I nod at him, also writing ‘its more than okay. thanks so much’. He smiles in what I guess was a ‘no problem’ kind of way.

I grab the pen again. I sigh and write ‘who was that lady that was here?’

dad- ‘her names Grace’

me- ‘why was she here?’

dad- ‘she’s a therapist. My colleuge called her in because he noticed that I wasn’t doing very well’

I looked up at him. I could feel tears threatening to form behind my eyes. I shook my head, looking down again.

me- ‘I’m supposed to be the one doing her job. I’m so sorry’

dad- ‘its not like you could do anything. I was getting out of hand’

I pushed my fringe back and leant against the back of the barstool. I rubbed my eyes and then ran my fingers through my hair while my dad served the pasta. It was plain, but I’m not complaining because I havn’t eaten with my dad for so long. I mostly stir the pasta for a long time, but then I realise my dad sliding the paper towards himself.

dad- ‘you’re so skinny, do you ever eat?’

I nod. 

me- ‘not much but I do’

I put a forkful of pasta in my mouth, chewing it thoughtfully. My dad gulps down his entire bowl pretty fast, but I stop in the middle of it. I’m honestly too happy to be that hungry, I can’t believe that after this many years I get to be able to sit down and eat with my father. I’m just about smiling all over while he points to the tv, I’m assuming that he’s asking if I want to watch. I furrow my brows and point to my ears, and he writes on the page ‘with subtitles’. I look up at him with raised brows now. I know that he used to complain to my mother about subtitles. My mother used to text me all about it, and that’s when I just about stopped watching tv. I’m not sure how long this will last with my dad so I take advantage of the situation and nod him yes. He smiles and we decide to watch The Walking Dead off Netflix, watching until late in the night when I motion to him that I’m going to bed because I have school tomorrow and want to be early enough to watch the sunrise. He nods and changes to watch something else, most definitely without the subtitles to annoy him. I grab my phone off the wall when I get to my room, scrolling through notifications. I notice I have messages from Brendon so I go to check those immediately. The first one is a picture message starring my instagram account, and him asking if it was mine.

That’s when I realise that the user that appeared in my add was his. Of course, he’s a new contact and he’s a ‘cool’ kind of person that goes off to be sad when no one is looking; an aesthetic with lyrics is exactly the kind of account that he would run. Something his friends would say ‘ew I don’t like this account’ to and he would reply with ‘ew its so my sisters don’t see my other pages’.

I reply with a ‘yep, that would be me. Are you the aesthetic one with the disco name?’

brendon: um yes

brendon: its weird its for my sisters to see lol

me: sure sure

brendon: it really is?

me: you know ive seen what ur like when u think no ones looking

brendon: true

brendon: don’t use it against me okay

me: I wont I promise

me: do you mind if I follow it

brendon: yeah sure go ahead

me: (:

I bring my instagram up and give a follow to ‘burndxwnthedisco’, receiving one follow from the same account and another one called ‘brendonurie’ which I have no doubt is the same person, but that’s the account he uses most. I followed the other account, and within seconds I had a message saying hello from it.

brendonurie: hello

panic_sunshine: hey

brendonurie: I like your user

panic_sunshine: lol thanks

panic_sunshine: I like your name I guess

brendonurie: ahah thank

panic_sunshine: im going to sleep now Im kinda tired

brendonurie: ok

brendonurie: sleep well

I kind of smiled to myself. Am I blessed or burdened with knowing the soft side of this boy? Not that I really know him very well yet. I set my phone next to my pillow and crawl into bed, feeling exhaustion creep over me.

I hadn’t needed to be depressed as I watched my room get darker today. I was too busy thinking or with my dad. Now the night is just existing, like the sun was there and then it just became the moon. I’m surprisingly calm now, considering what I have been of late. My dad is not drunk off his head, I might possibly have some kind of friends, and I hardly missed a moment of the sun. Everything worked out surprisingly well, and I wished so hard that every day could be like this evening, where my dad is sober and watches tv with me, subtitles turned on, Pete and Patrick text me every now and then and I have a couple short conversations with Brendon. Maybe the lady, Grace her name was, will be back and will keep my dad sober and healthy. Maybe I was wrong the entire time and I did not have enough power to help my father get better. But maybe it’s beginners luck and Grace can’t even help, and I have to endure the pain of my father being the way he was and this time I will fix him if that happens. I will help him next time. 

You calm down the way you fall asleep.

Slowly.

Then all at once.


End file.
